1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a shotgun cartridge, and more particularly to a tracer or similar cartridge which facilitates tracing of the trajectories of individual shots propelled from a shotgun. The cartridge of the invention is suitable for shooting or hunting and allows a marksman to trace the manner in which the propelled shots spread out.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In rifle shooting, a single bullet is fired at a fixed target. Clay-pigeon shooting, on the other hand, which includes trapshooting and skeet shooting is different from rifle shooting in that the object of clay-pigeon shooting is to hit a flying target (i.e., a clay-pigeon in the form of an ash-tray like saucer made of pitch and clay or limestone which measure 11 centimeters in diameter and 100 grams in weight) flying at 20 meters per second. A cartridge for clay-pigeon shooting (powder-loaded shot cartridge) includes hundreds of small lead shots, and when the cartridge is fired, the shots are propelled and spread out a certain extent so that some of the shots may hit the clay-pigeon and break it. The marksman who hits the most clay-pigeons wins the clay-pigeon shooting competition.
Since the clay-pigeon flies fairly quickly, one cannot score a hit by directly aiming at the clay-pigeon itself, but must fire the charge of shots ahead of (i.e., the so-called "lead") the flying clay-pigeon to allow for the movement of the target. The secret and the interest of clay-pigeon shooting is partly in this lead, and the magnitude of the lead varies considerably from marksman to marksman depending on the state of their reflex and motor nerves. Each beginner in clay-pigeon shooting has to expend much effort and money to get his best feeling for producing the proper lead, because in the beginning he is hardly aware of whether he has fired ahead of the flying clay-pigeon or not. Accordingly, the clay-pigeon shooting coach finds it most difficult to teach beginners how to obtain a proper lead.
If the shots fired emanate visual traces while flying so as to enable a marksman to see clearly the way his shots fly, the marksman can easily find out the relative positions of the flying clay-pigeon and his shots flying with a certain extent of spread, and such visual traces will greatly facilitate the practice or exercise of clay-pigeon shooting beginners. Heretofore, tracer cartridges have been used for practice. The tracer cartridge of the prior art, however, uses one tracer capsule per cartridge, so that the marksman can see the trajectory of the tracer capsule but he cannot see the extent to which the shots he fired spread. Thus, there is a need for a tracer cartridge which produces traces of the individual shots from the cartridge.